The Starving Time

The Starving Time refers to
the winter of 1609–1610 when about three-quarters of the English colonists in Virginia died of starvation or
starvation-related diseases. In his unpublished account A Trewe
Relacyon, George Percy,
who served as president during these grim months, wrote that Englishmen felt "the sharpe
pricke of hunger which noe man trewly descrybe butt he which hathe tasted the
bitternesse thereof." Already for two years, the Jamestown colonists had died at alarming
rates, mostly of summertime diseases. In 1609, the beginning of the First Anglo-Powhatan War
(1609–1614) prompted the Indians to lay siege to the English fort, helping to provoke
the famine. Settlers were forced to eat snakes, vipers, rats, mice, musk turtles,
cats, dogs, horses, and perhaps even raptors. In addition, multiple gruesome stories
suggest, and archaeological evidence has partially corroborated, that settlers
devoured each other. The siege lifted in May 1610, and when the survivors of the Sea Venture
wreck arrived in Virginia, they found just 60 gaunt remnants of the 240 people who
had crowded the fort the previous November. Many observers argued that the colonists'
idleness—their persistent refusal to work for their food—contributed to the famine.
It is likely, though, that malnutrition and despair worked together to create
symptoms that imitated laziness. In the end, Virginia survived, but just barely. MORE...

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Background

After arriving at Jamestown
in the spring of 1607, the 104 original English colonists
were amazed by the country's natural abundance. Mussels and oysters "lay on the
ground as thicke as stones," George Percy wrote in an account published in 1625;
"wee opened some, and found in many of them Pearles." Yet survival in Virginia
proved to be difficult. The Indians of Tsenacomoco—a paramount chiefdom of
twenty-eight to thirty-two Algonquian-speaking groups in the Tidewater—alternately, sometimes simultaneously,
wooed and pressured the colonists. In May, one group of Indians feasted English
leaders near the falls of the James
River while another attacked their settlement at Jamestown, killing two.
Three months later, in August, the first of many summertime sicknesses set in,
killing more than half of the colonists. By the end of the year, only about forty
survived. Reinforcements helped offset the toll again taken by the so-called
summer seasoning, so that by mid-December 1608 Jamestown's population stood at
about 200.

Percy wrote that he and his fellow colonists succumbed to the bloody flux (probably
diarrhea), burning fevers, and swellings, in addition to wounds they received at
the hands of the Indians. "For the most part," however, "they died of meere
famine." He went on to lament that "There were never Englishmen left in a
forreigne Countrey in such miserie as wee were in this new discovered Virginia."
He described his men as "feeble wretches": "Our food was but a small Can of Barlie
sod in water to five men a day, our drinke cold water taken out of the River which
was at a floud verie salt, at a low tide full of slime and filth, which was the
destruction of many of our men." The colonist Ralph Hamor later blamed "misgovernment, idlenesse,
and faction" for these early deaths, suggesting that "people were fedde out of the
common store and labored jointly in the manuring of the ground, and planting
corne." As a result, "glad was that man that could slippe from his labor," for he
knew that he would be maintained by the communal food supply.

At the same time, Virginia was mired in a terrible drought. Tree-ring studies conducted by
scientists from the University of Arkansas, who examined a bald cypress near
Jamestown, discovered that the colonists arrived at the beginning of a seven-year
drought (1606–1612), the driest period in 770 years. Moreover, conditions were
particularly severe near Jamestown, an ecological zone (oligohaline) where the
exchange between fresh and salt water is minimal. While the drought made
conditions particularly unfavorable, the colonists—mostly military men and skilled
laborers—showed no inclination or ability to hunt, fish, or farm, instead relying
on overseas shipments or food that they could bargain, or often outright steal,
from the Indians. But the residents of Tsenacomoco were feeling the drought no
less than the English, and could scarcely afford these unexpected demands on their
food supply.

With the coming of winter in 1608 and with
Captain John Smith now
president, the Indians largely refused to trade. In January, Tsenacomoco's
paramount chief, Powhatan, even
attempted to have Smith killed. Meanwhile, the colonists battled, in Smith's
words, "the extremitie of sickness, mutinies, faction, ignorances, and want of
victuall." And yet during that winter, Smith "lost but 7 or 8 men."

That they stayed alive for Smith only to die in such droves the next winter under
his successor, George Percy, has led historians to wonder what changed. One of
Smith's apparent insights was that work was necessary and self-sustaining. "He
that will not worke shall not eate," he told the colonists, adding that "the
labours of thirtie or fortie honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to
maintaine a hundred and fiftie idle loyterers." Like Hamor (and other
colonist-observers), Smith worried about idleness, a condition some historians
have likened to laziness, suggesting that too many of the early colonists were
gentlemen and so unaccustomed to labor. Many historians now disagree. Karen Ordahl
Kupperman, for instance, has countered that men suffering from malnutrition
"exhibit symptoms in their early phases which appear to be purely psychological,
such as loss of appetite (anorexia) and indifference." In other words, weakness
and fatigue may have looked like laziness but were in reality illness. Regardless
of whether Smith recognized this fact, he found that even small amounts of work
improved both the material life and health of the colonists.

First Anglo-Powhatan War

The political and military situation changed drastically during 1609, however.
After more than a quarter of the colonists died of sickness during the summer,
another resupply raised the population to nearly 400. (The ships' famished
passengers promptly devoured a field of corn intended to feed the colonists
throughout the winter.) The resupply also brought with it news of a second charter for the
Jamestown colony. In pursuit of a more aggressive policy against the Indians of
Tsenacomoco, the Virginia
Company of London instituted a new, more centralized government that
would no longer be led by Smith but by some of his loudest critics. Although much
of the new leadership (apparently) had been lost at sea on the resupply's flagship
Sea Venture, he was still weakened politically.

In an effort to ease conditions at
Jamestown and possibly to distance himself from his critics, Smith sent two parties of
men to live off the Indians. One group, under Francis West, traveled to the falls of the
James River; another, under George Percy and John Martin, went south and attempted to meet with
the Nansemond Indians.
Both missions failed badly, with each group losing about half its men in fighting.
When Smith sent reinforcements south, they found piles of English corpses, their
mouths stuffed with bread "in Contempte and skorne," according to Percy. The
Powhatans understood that without food, the English could not continue in
Tsenacomoco, and the Indians controlled the food. Meanwhile, Smith himself
traveled north. On his way back to Jamestown, a gunpowder explosion injured him
and forced his return to England.

These confrontations on the James marked the beginning of the First
Anglo-Powhatan War. In November 1609, another party of Englishmen was ambushed and
its leader, John Ratcliffe,
tortured to death. Next, while trading with the Patawomecks, Francis West beheaded two
warriors; a rebellion on his ship the Swallow ended with
West and his men sailing to England. The remaining 240 settlers retreated to
Jamestown, not counting 30, under Captain James Davis, who remained at Fort Algernon near the mouth of the
James. At this point, in November 1609, Powhatan ordered a siege of Jamestown, a
move that initiated, finally, the period known as the Starving Time.

Famine

The Powhatans did not need to risk
casualties by directly attacking the colonists; instead, they used famine as a
weapon. From November until May, they prevented settlers from leaving the fort to
hunt, fish, bargain for, or steal food. The Indians also quickly slaughtered the
colonists' hogs, which, in an attempt to be more sanitary, they had penned on an
island a short distance down the James. As the winter wore on, the trapped English
men and women died of malnutrition caused by hunger, contaminated water, and
generally unclean conditions. "A worlde of miseries ensewed," Percy wrote. Forced
to break taboo and eat horses, they were "gladd" to shift to "doggs Catts Ratts
and myce" and even "Bootes shoes or any other leather some Colde come by." When
some robbed the company store, Percy ordered the offenders executed. As more and
more colonists died, Percy wrote how those left living "Looked Lyke Anotamies
[skeletons] Cryeinge owtt we are starved We are starved." A man named Hugh Pryse
shouted "openly into the markett place" that if there were a god, he would not
tolerate such suffering. As Percy noted, however, "the Almighty was displeased
with him," for that afternoon, Pryse and a "corpulentt" butcher fled the fort only
to be killed by Indians.

Multiple accounts of the Starving Time allege that the colonists resorted to
cannibalism. Percy reported that some people exhumed and ate the dead, while
others "Licked upp the Bloode w[hi]ch hathe fallen from their weake fellowes."
Even worse, one man "murdered his wyfe Ripped the childe outt of her woambe and
threw itt into the River and after chopped the Mother in pieces and salted her for
his foode." Only partway through his meal when discovered, he was tortured into a
confession and then burned for his "crewell and inhumane" act. A General Assembly report,
produced in 1624 by the remaining Ancient Planters (settlers who came to Virginia
before Sir Thomas Dale's
departure in 1616, remained for a period of three years, and received the first
land grants), echoed that description, adding that the man "fedd uppon her [his wife]
till he had clean devoured all partes saveinge her head." John Smith's Generall Historieoffered up
a bit of black humor: "now whether shee was better roasted, boyled or carbonado'd
[barbecued], I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of."
Sir Thomas Gates,
however, seemed skeptical, charging that the culprit "mortally hated his Wife, and
therefore secretly killed her." The cannibalism was merely the story he told when
caught; upon being searched, his house yielded "a good quantitie of Meale."

Archaeological investigations of Jamestown have confirmed
much of what Percy wrote. Artifact assemblages dating to about 1610 suggest the
consumption of snakes, vipers, rats, mice, musk turtles, cats, dogs, and perhaps
even raptors. Heavily butchered horses account for more than 12 percent of the
total recovered biomass, while recovered cattle bones (14 percent) are missing
heads and feet, suggesting that beef, not cattle, was shipped from England.
(Historians have long assumed that livestock was part of the cargo of various
resupply missions prior to 1611.) In 2013, archaeologists from Preservation Virginia and the
Smithsonian Institution announced that they had found a skull and portions of a
skeleton at Jamestown that bore evidence of cannibalism. They suspect that a
fourteen-year-old English girl had been consumed after her death.

Other scholars have called for caution. The historian Rachel B. Herrmann has
argued that no primary sources have cited the cannibalization of this particular
girl. At the same time, the authors of the cannibalism tales all had motives to tell the stories
they did. John Smith emphasized the misery of the Starving Time in order to
contrast it with his time as president, when there was an abundance of food. Percy
may have offered an exaggerated version of events in order to suggest that there
was little he could have done to prevent the famine or its consequences. For their
part, the authors of the General Assembly report were lobbying for authority in
Virginia to be transferred from the company to the Crown. In the end, Herrmann
writes, reasonable arguments can be made for and against cannibalism having
occurred. "Without new evidence historians can get no closer to knowing exactly
what happened."

In May 1610, Powhatan's Indians lifted the
siege so that they could begin their spring planting. This allowed Percy to visit
Captain Davis at Fort Algernon. There he found the outpost, which lost none of its
thirty men over the winter, to be so well supplied that hogs were fed leftover
crab meat. Upset that Davis's men had "concealed their plenty from us," Percy
suggested that what at Algernon had been fit merely for hogs, at Jamestown "wold
have bene a greate relefe unto us and saved many of our Lyves." Finally, on May
24, the survivors of the Sea Venture wreck, having been
marooned for the last year in Bermuda, miraculously appeared. What they found horrified
them. At Jamestown, only 60 men and women, out of 240, remained alive.

Aftermath

Sir Thomas Gates soon decided to abandon the colony and had to restrain the weary
colonists from burning their settlement to the ground. But while sailing down the
James, they encountered a ship bearing the new governor, Thomas West, baron De La Warr, and a
year's worth of supplies. That evening the colonists returned, many of them
unhappily, to Jamestown and to a new, stricter regime. The Starving Time, it
seems, was being blamed on that old bugaboo idleness. William Strachey, who arrived with Gates and
soon became the colony's new secretary, offered one "incredible example": Gates,
he wrote, "hath seene some of them eat their fish raw, rather then they would goe
a stones cast to fetch wood to dresse it." Having castigated the lost crew of the
Swallow ("Unto idlenesse you may joyne Treasons"),
Strachey summarized the dysfunctions that precipitated a famine: Cast up the
reckoning together: want of government, store of idleness, their expectations
frustrated by Traytos, their market spoyled by the Mariners, our Nets broken
the Deere chased, our Boats lost, our Hogs killed, our trade with the Indians
forbidden, some of our men fled, some murthered, and most by drinking of the
brackish water of James Fort weakened and indangered, famine and sicknesse by
all these meanes increased …

In the end, better discipline did help to
save the colony, along with increased immigration, success in the wars against the
Powhatans, and, with the cultivation of tobacco, a more stable economy. Regardless, the Starving Time, and its
attendant tales of cannibalism, proved a turning point. "They enabled colonists to
shift from envisioning the New World as a place of boundless abundance to one of
more realistic and measured possibility," Herrmann writes. "The Starving Time
functioned as a fortunate fall that allowed leaders to reassert control over
unruly settlers and to impose laws controlling food production, dissemination, and
consumption." In the meantime, what likely killed 75 percent of those at Jamestown
was not idleness. Karen Ordahl Kupperman cites malnutrition that led to diseases
such as pellagra, beriberi, scurvy, malaria, and dysentery, all of which
"interacted with the psychological effects of isolation and despair and each
intensified the other." What appeared to be idleness was instead the extreme
effects of that "sharpe pricke of hunger" that may or may not have led a man to
devour his wife but that surely almost destroyed the Virginia colony.

Time Line

Summer 1609
- John Smith unsuccessfully attempts to purchase from Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, the fortified town of Powhatan in order to settle English colonists there.

June 2, 1609
- The largest fleet England has ever amassed in the West—nine ships, 600 passengers, and livestock and provisions to last a year—leaves England for Virginia. Led by the flagship Sea Venture, the fleet's mission is to save the failing colony. Sir Thomas Gates heads the expedition.

July 24, 1609
- A hurricane strikes the nine-ship English fleet bound for Virginia on a rescue mission. The flagship Sea Venture is separated from the other vessels and irreparably damaged by the storm.

Late August 1609
- After being damaged by a hurricane, eight of nine English ships bound for Virginia arrive safely at Jamestown under the assumption that the flagship Sea Venture, carrying Captain Christopher Newport and Sir Thomas Gates, had been lost at sea. The news sends the colony into a political tailspin.

August 11, 1609
- Four ships reach Jamestown from England: Unity, Lion, Blessing, and Falcon. Two others are en route; two more were wrecked in a storm; and one, Sea Venture, was cast up on the Bermuda islands' shoals.

August 18, 1609
- Two ships reach Jamestown from England: Diamond and Swallow. Four others arrived a week earlier; two more were wrecked in a storm; and one, Sea Venture, survived by making its way south to the Bermuda islands. The Diamond may have brought with it disease that will contribute to the colony's high mortality rate.

Early September 1609
- John Smith sends Francis West and 120 men to the falls of the James River. George Percy and 60 men attempt to bargain with the Nansemond Indians for an island. Two messengers are killed and the English burn the Nansemonds' town and their crops.

September 10, 1609
- In the absence of Governor Sir Thomas Gates and his implementation of the Second Charter, George Percy is elected president of the Council in Virginia.

October 1609
- John Smith leaves Virginia. The Jamestown colony's new leadership is less competent, and the Starving Time follows that winter.

November 1609
- Powhatan invites a party of about thirty colonists, led by John Ratcliffe, to Orapax on the promise of a store of corn. The English are ambushed and killed; Ratcliffe himself is tortured to death.

November 1609
- Powhatan Indians lay siege to Jamestown, denying colonists access to outside food sources. The Starving Time begins, and by spring 160 colonists, or about 75 percent of Jamestown's population, will be dead from hunger and disease. This action begins the First Anglo-Powhatan War (1609–1614).

Early May 1610
- Powhatan Indians lift their winter-long siege of Jamestown.

May 21, 1610
- Having been stranded in the Bermuda islands for nearly a year, the party of Virginia colonists headed by Sir Thomas Gates arrives at Point Comfort in the Chesapeake Bay.

May 24, 1610
- The party of Virginia colonists headed by Sir Thomas Gates, , now aboard the Patience and Deliverance, arrives at Jamestown. They find only sixty survivors of a winter famine. Gates decides to abandon the colony for Newfoundland.

June 8, 1610
- Sailing up the James River toward the Chesapeake Bay and then Newfoundland, Jamestown colonists encounter a ship bearing the new governor, Thomas West, baron De La Warr, and a year's worth of supplies. The colonists return to Jamestown that evening.